Latest news with #LarryFink
Irish Examiner
4 hours ago
- Business
- Irish Examiner
The US Banks that fueled Ireland's finance rebound face tariff angst
When the US launched sweeping tariffs against trade partners in April, BlackRock Inc. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink found himself in Ireland, one of the countries with most to lose if US multinationals were forced to curtail their operations overseas. Fink, whose company was in the running for a major contract with the Irish government at the time, toed a careful line, claiming to 'understand the logic' of Donald Trump's move while not agreeing with it, and insisting there 'does not need to be a true trade war.' Almost three months on, the Wall Street giants that created thousands of Dublin jobs since Brexit are in a similarly awkward position. They're trying to balance the challenges created by their own government with the opportunities in a country that depends on US multinationals for more than 10% of its jobs and a big chunk of tax receipts. For now, the banks are hopeful their multinational clients will adapt to the trade uncertainty. 'It's not obvious to me that that falls off a cliff' under the threat of tariffs, says Marc Hussey, the Irish-born JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive who returned home to run the bank's 1,500-strong Dublin business in 2022. Larry Fink Assuming multinationals 'shrink overnight' would be an 'extreme view,' Hussey added, and he is 'not sensing that from any of our clients.' He continues to see growth in the range of businesses he oversees including a global funds administration center, a workplace solutions business that runs employment share programs across the world and the EMEA hub for Chase payments technology. Ireland remains popular in JPMorgan's head office too — CEO Jamie Dimon will travel to Dublin next month to speak at an event, his fourth such trip in six years. Almost a decade on from the UK's Brexit vote that cut off London's banks from a several markets inside the European Union, Ireland has become a big draw for foreign lenders. They now employ close to 15,000 people, according to a report from the Federation of International Banks in Ireland last month, with firms including JPMorgan, Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. leading the way to set up major EU businesses in the country. That choice puts them at the eye of the tariffs storm in a market that has long been heavily exposed to US multinationals, prompting recent warnings about the outlook for the economy and the risk to financial stability. As part of the EU, Ireland's fate is tied to negotiations with Trump ahead of a July 9 deadline, after which nearly all of the bloc's imports to the US will be hit with a 50% levy. Across the River Liffey from JPMorgan's offices, Citi's 2,900 staff are working across an innovation hub, the group's EU bank headquarters and an international corporate banking businesses. Citi CEO Jane Fraser was in town a few weeks ago to mark the bank's 60th anniversary in the nation, and hailed Ireland as 'a hub for innovation, a magnet for multinationals and a vital part of the world's economic landscape.' The bank's new Dublin office, to be opened next year with space for an extra 400 staff, is 'a symbol of our long-term investment in Ireland and in Europe,' she added in a LinkedIn post. Hussey is hoping the move increases the chances of a long-promised footbridge that would link JPMorgan on Dublin's southside to the northside of the Liffey, where Citi's new office will join the Central Bank of Ireland's headquarters. Davinia Conlan, Citi's Ireland head and chair of industry group FIBI, argues that there is 'a lot to be positive about from an Ireland domestic economy perspective' and she is hopeful that Citi will ultimately fill its 3,300 capacity in the new site, though she's not putting any time line on that. 'We're still expecting the economy to, to grow albeit at a slower pace than we would've seen previously,' she said. Wish List Ireland also offers companies the benefit of 'ease of access' to government, Conlan said. The Department of Finance will soon launch an industry consultation on its next international financial services strategy, a successor to the Ireland for Finance strategy launched in 2020 which covers banks, insurers, funds and other firms that combined employ around 60,000. Regulatory simplification will be high on the industry's wish list, Conlan and her peers say, with firms set to call on Ireland to remove some 'gold-plating' of EU rules and to push the bloc to be more competitive around regulation. The international banks' federation, FIBI, is preparing a proposal on simplification which will offer examples of areas where regulation can be 'more efficient,' Conlan said, declining to offer goldplating examples before that. Investments in infrastructure and housing, including a long promised airport metro, will also be on the list. Fernando Vicario, who heads Bank of America's Dublin-based EU head office, is hopeful that imminent reform of the EU's securitization market will offer a further boost for his 1,300-strong team, which has been retaining its earnings to support future growth. 'Ireland can be a place where these securitization deals can be packaged out of Ireland into the rest of Europe,' he said, adding that the country already commands a big presence in this market. Vicario does not expect the Irish government to pivot to protectionist sentiment, which has cropped up in some countries in response to Trump's trade approach. 'I learned in Boston that America is Irish,' says Vicario. 'In business, people stick to their positions and do business. And we do business with Irish headquartered companies and with Irish branches and subsidiaries of US companies, all day long. I have quite frankly no problem whatsoever with our passport referring to our US origin.' Ireland has shown it has no problems with US companies either: following Fink's careful diplomacy, BlackRock was last month named a preferred bidder to help manage the country's multibillion-euro pension program. Bloomberg
Mint
5 hours ago
- Business
- Mint
US Banks That Fueled Ireland's Finance Rebound Face Tariff Angst
(Bloomberg) -- When the US launched sweeping tariffs against trade partners in April, BlackRock Inc. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink found himself in Ireland, one of the countries with most to lose if US multinationals were forced to curtail their operations overseas. Fink, whose company was in the running for a major contract with the Irish government at the time, toed a careful line, claiming to 'understand the logic' of Donald Trump's move while not agreeing with it, and insisting there 'does not need to be a true trade war.' Almost three months on, the Wall Street giants that created thousands of Dublin jobs since Brexit are in a similarly awkward position. They're trying to balance the challenges created by their own government with the opportunities in a country that depends on US multinationals for more than 10% of its jobs and a big chunk of tax receipts. For now, the banks are hopeful their multinational clients will adapt to the trade uncertainty. 'It's not obvious to me that that falls off a cliff' under the threat of tariffs, says Marc Hussey, the Irish-born JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive who returned home to run the bank's 1,500-strong Dublin business in 2022. Assuming multinationals 'shrink overnight' would be an 'extreme view,' Hussey added, and he is 'not sensing that from any of our clients.' He continues to see growth in the range of businesses he oversees including a global funds administration center, a workplace solutions business that runs employment share programs across the world and the EMEA hub for Chase payments technology. Ireland remains popular in JPMorgan's head office too — CEO Jamie Dimon will travel to Dublin next month to speak at an event, his fourth such trip in six years. Almost a decade on from the UK's Brexit vote that cut off London's banks from a several markets inside the European Union, Ireland has become a big draw for foreign lenders. They now employ close to 15,000 people, according to a report from the Federation of International Banks in Ireland last month, with firms including JPMorgan, Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. leading the way to set up major EU businesses in the country. That choice puts them at the eye of the tariffs storm in a market that has long been heavily exposed to US multinationals, prompting recent warnings about the outlook for the economy and the risk to financial stability. As part of the EU, Ireland's fate is tied to negotiations with Trump ahead of a July 9 deadline, after which nearly all of the bloc's imports to the US will be hit with a 50% levy. Across the River Liffey from JPMorgan's offices, Citi's 2,900 staff are working across an innovation hub, the group's EU bank headquarters and an international corporate banking businesses. Citi CEO Jane Fraser was in town a few weeks ago to mark the bank's 60th anniversary in the nation, and hailed Ireland as 'a hub for innovation, a magnet for multinationals and a vital part of the world's economic landscape.' The bank's new Dublin office, to be opened next year with space for an extra 400 staff, is 'a symbol of our long-term investment in Ireland and in Europe,' she added in a LinkedIn post. Hussey is hoping the move increases the chances of a long-promised footbridge that would link JPMorgan on Dublin's southside to the northside of the Liffey, where Citi's new office will join the Central Bank of Ireland's headquarters. Davinia Conlan, Citi's Ireland head and chair of industry group FIBI, argues that there is 'a lot to be positive about from an Ireland domestic economy perspective' and she is hopeful that Citi will ultimately fill its 3,300 capacity in the new site, though she's not putting any time line on that. 'We're still expecting the economy to, to grow albeit at a slower pace than we would've seen previously,' she said. Ireland also offers companies the benefit of 'ease of access' to government, Conlan said. The Department of Finance will soon launch an industry consultation on its next international financial services strategy, a successor to the Ireland for Finance strategy launched in 2020 which covers banks, insurers, funds and other firms that combined employ around 60,000. Regulatory simplification will be high on the industry's wish list, Conlan and her peers say, with firms set to call on Ireland to remove some 'gold-plating' of EU rules and to push the bloc to be more competitive around regulation. The international banks' federation, FIBI, is preparing a proposal on simplification which will offer examples of areas where regulation can be 'more efficient,' Conlan said, declining to offer goldplating examples before that. Investments in infrastructure and housing, including a long promised airport metro, will also be on the list. Fernando Vicario, who heads Bank of America's Dublin-based EU head office, is hopeful that imminent reform of the EU's securitization market will offer a further boost for his 1,300-strong team, which has been retaining its earnings to support future growth. 'Ireland can be a place where these securitization deals can be packaged out of Ireland into the rest of Europe,' he said, adding that the country already commands a big presence in this market. Vicario does not expect the Irish government to pivot to protectionist sentiment, which has cropped up in some countries in response to Trump's trade approach. 'I learned in Boston that America is Irish,' says Vicario. 'In business, people stick to their positions and do business. And we do business with Irish headquartered companies and with Irish branches and subsidiaries of US companies, all day long. I have quite frankly no problem whatsoever with our passport referring to our US origin.' Ireland has shown it has no problems with US companies either: following Fink's careful diplomacy, BlackRock was last month named a preferred bidder to help manage the country's multibillion-euro pension program. --With assistance from Leonard Kehnscherper. More stories like this are available on
Bloomberg
5 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
US Banks That Fueled Ireland's Finance Rebound Face Tariff Angst
When the US launched sweeping tariffs against trade partners in April, BlackRock Inc. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink found himself in Ireland, one of the countries with most to lose if US multinationals were forced to curtail their operations overseas. Fink, whose company was in the running for a major contract with the Irish government at the time, toed a careful line, claiming to 'understand the logic' of Donald Trump's move while not agreeing with it, and insisting there 'does not need to be a true trade war.'
Forbes
18 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
The Case Against Gamified Prop Trading
The trading industry stands at a crossroads. One road leads to more gamification, more extraction, more disillusionment. The other leads to professionalism, purpose, and shared upside. In a recent op-ed for the Financial Times, BlackRock Chair and CEO Larry Fink called for the second draft of globalisation. 'The first step,' he said, is in 'helping more people become investors.' Fink outlined how 'the Trump administration's tariffs are the symptom of a backlash to the era of what might be called 'globalism without guardrails.' Global GDP grew more since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 than in all recorded history before it. But the benefits weren't evenly shared. S&P 500 investors saw a return of more than 3,800 per cent. Rustbelt workers did not.' He goes on to argue that 'at the heart of this new model are the capital markets: exchanges where people invest in stocks, bonds, infrastructure, everything. Why? Because markets are uniquely suited to transforming global growth into local wealth.' I couldn't agree more. While Fink was primarily referring to people's ability to invest in markets long-term, it's equally important to make the case for the power of markets in the context of trading. It has never been easier to provide people with a real understanding of stock markets and opportunities to harness their power. But it needs to be done properly. In the post-pandemic world, trading is popular and perilous. From Reddit-fueled meme stocks to Instagram ads promising six-figure incomes in weeks, trading has become a cultural phenomenon. But beneath the glossy surface of fast payouts, slick dashboards, and instant accounts lies a more uncomfortable truth: in the new age of gamified proprietary trading, the trader is no longer the protagonist; they're the product. This is the reality ushered in by platforms like Hola Prime and the explosion of 'funded trader programs.' What began as a promising movement to democratize market access has mutated into a profit-extraction engine dressed up in UX and buzzwords. If the GameStop saga exposed the dangers of payment for order flow, the current state of prop trading is a sequel where the script is even more cynical. The premise of these new platforms is seductive: we'll give you capital to trade without risking your own money. Just pass a simple evaluation, click through a few disclaimers, and you're off to the races. Some now even offer instant accounts: skip the test, trade now, get paid in under an hour. But here's the rub: the business model isn't about helping you succeed. It's about getting you through the door, extracting fees, and quietly setting conditions that ensure most participants fail. The real revenue engine isn't trading profits, it's the fees traders pay for the privilege of chasing them. Most funded trader platforms charge upfront fees for evaluations, with limited transparency and minimal incentive alignment. If you fail (as most do), the firm keeps your money. If you succeed, you're handed capital under highly artificial constraints: inflated spreads, punitive commissions, and execution speeds that are just slow enough to give the house the edge. It's a system rigged for churn. The faster you burn out, the sooner the next aspiring trader can be onboarded and monetized. This isn't proprietary trading; it's proprietary entertainment, where every trader is both contestant and consumer. Gamified dashboards, explosive payout headlines, are engineered to hook you like a Vegas slot machine. All wrapped in a language of empowerment that masks a deeply extractive core. Take Hola Prime's headline-grabbing '1-Hour Payouts.' On paper, it's a breakthrough. In practice, it's table stakes masquerading as a revolution. Speedy payouts are nice, but they're a distraction from the real question: what are you actually building for traders? Are you training them in institutional-grade discipline? Are you teaching risk management? Are you offering a career ladder or a casino floor? Real proprietary trading firms do all of the above. They invest in their traders, not just their branding. They build loyalty through long-term alignment, not short-term gimmicks. At firms like Real Trading, when traders win, the firm wins. There's no fee treadmill, no asymmetry. The incentives are clear, and the traders are treated like the talent they are, not just throughput on a spreadsheet. 'Instant Accounts' skip the evaluation process entirely. That's not innovation, it's abdication. For serious traders, the evaluation is the beginning of the journey. It's where you demonstrate discipline, consistency, and judgment under pressure. It's where a firm learns who you are and whether it can entrust you with capital. By removing it, you lower the barrier, but you also flatten the profession. What's left isn't trading; it's speculation, dressed up in startup lingo. There is real talent in this new generation of retail traders, particularly in emerging markets. These are individuals hungry to learn, to grow, to become professionals. But instead of nurturing them, the current wave of gamified prop firms exploits them. Imagine what could happen if this energy were redirected toward institutional discipline rather than dopamine-fueled churn. If platforms invested in career-building, not just customer acquisition. Real proprietary trading should be a path, not a pit stop. The markets have become faster, more automated, and more unequal. The edge now often lies with those who can deploy algorithms and AI at scale. But amid this high-frequency arms race, something fundamental is being lost: the human trader. Human judgment. Emotional intelligence. Pattern recognition that no bot can replicate. These are the qualities that, when nurtured, complement, if not beat, the work of the machines; especially in moments of market chaos where instinct and experience trump code. Real prop firms recognize this. They treat traders as long-term partners. They offer structured training, risk coaching, and capital scaling that mirrors performance. They don't hand you a lottery ticket; they hand you a roadmap. The trading industry stands at a crossroads. One road leads to more gamification, more extraction, more disillusionment. The other leads to professionalism, purpose, and shared upside. The question isn't whether fast payouts or sleek apps are bad. It's whether they come instead of meaningful development, or in support of it. The next generation of traders deserves more than gimmicks. They deserve mentorship, meritocracy, and the tools to build a future, not just flip a trade. Let's stop turning traders into products and start turning them into professionals.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
BlackRock Dumps 14 Funds, Many Being Sustainable Products
BlackRock is clipping more than a dozen mutual funds and ETFs from its lines, about half of which focus on sustainable investing. In most cases, the funds appear to have struggled to attract assets: The majority each represent less than $50 million. In all, they account for $549 million, with nearly half of that in the $254 million BlackRock Impact Mortgage Fund, which has been in operation since 1992. The asset management giant filed notices Friday for many of the closures, largely for the sustainable funds. The firm did not offer specific explanations for eliminating any individual funds but stated in an announcement that 'as we evolve our platform and launch new strategies, we also constantly assess how our funds are meeting investors' investment objectives and the evolving needs of our clients.' READ ALSO: What the Israel-Iran Conflict Means for Sector ETFs and Fidelity, Franklin Prep Solana ETFs with Staking More than any other asset manager, BlackRock has faced the brunt of campaigns against sustainable investing and ESG, or environmental, social, and governance criteria. Over the past several years, BlackRock has been blacklisted by some states for allegedly boycotting the fossil fuels industry, despite being one of the biggest investors in it. Some of the ire stems from public comments by CEO Larry Fink, who had characterized social and environmental responsibility as necessary causes for asset managers. Recently, though, BlackRock has ended its membership in international climate groups, and it subsequently had investment restrictions lifted in Texas. Currently, the company, as well as Vanguard and State Street, face an antitrust lawsuit brought by a coalition of Republican states, including Texas, over climate-related initiatives. The sentiment against ESG may have adversely affected demand for the sustainable products, but it's unclear how much that factored into the low asset levels and decisions to end the funds. It's notable that all but one of the funds being shuttered are actively managed, and most are at least four years old, said Hortense Bioy, head of sustainable investing research at Morningstar. 'That also reflects the trend that passive is gaining more traction and active strategies are losing ground,' she said. Investors have been pulling money from the company's US sustainable funds, data from Morningstar Direct show: BlackRock's sustainable mutual funds saw a total of $1.5 billion in net redemptions in 2024, while the iShares sustainable ETFs had $5.2 billion in net outflows. The mutual funds have shed $142 million so far this year through May, compared with $4 million exiting the ETFs. Still Pretty Big: BlackRock has about $2.8 billion in assets in its sustainable US mutual funds and $55.9 billion in the iShares ETFs, the Morningstar data show. The company is also the dominant player in sustainable investing globally, with much of its assets in institutional strategies, Bioy said. 'They're still providing investment opportunities for investors who want to get exposure to the [energy] transition, but that's in forms other than mutual funds and ETFs.' This post first appeared on The Daily Upside. To receive exclusive news and analysis of the rapidly evolving ETF landscape, built for advisors and capital allocators, subscribe to our free ETF Upside newsletter. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
